The pounding erupted again, so he shook the thought off and returned to his slow progress down the hall. Prepared for an unwanted solicitation or an unexpected delivery, he jerked the front door open with a growl, only to find that the woman he had been thinking about only seconds ago had materialized from his ruminations and stood on the other side.
Although it was common enough for women to cross the street just so they could walk by a fire station, Boone couldn’t recall a single incident where one had actually come to a firefighter’s house. Although now that he got a better look at her, he decided it might not be such a bad tradition to start.
“Hi,” she greeted him with a bright smile. “Remember me?”
For a moment he couldn’t say a word. He could only stare into those compelling blue eyes that had lingered in his thoughts until sleep had claimed him. No, he suddenly remembered, that wasn’t exactly true. Even in sleep, those eyes had haunted him.
“Yeah, sure I remember. You okay?”
She nodded anxiously but said nothing to confirm her condition for sure.
Boone nodded vaguely in response and forced himself to pull his gaze away from her eyes. Inevitably, though, it roved relentlessly over the rest of her. Cleaned up, he noted, she looked a little sturdier than she had the night before. Cleaned up, she looked a little heartier. She looked older, too, probably near his own thirty-six years, and much less fragile and commanding of care. Last night, she had seemed close to crumpling into a hopeless, helpless heap of despair. But now...
Now, he realized, in spite of the baggy, masculine, obviously borrowed clothing that hung on her body like sackcloth, she actually looked quite...fetching.
Although her bangs were long—nearly down in her eyes— her black hair was cut shorter than his own. The style might have been boyish had it not topped such utterly feminine features. Her lashes seemed even darker than her black hair, a stark contrast to the pale blue of her irises. Her cheekbones were well-defined and stained with pink, though Boone knew without question that the color didn’t result from any manufactured cosmetic. Her full lips, too, were blushed with color, though again, he could see that heightened emotion, and nothing more, caused the flush.
Dropping his gaze lower, he also saw that she bore a nasty bruise on the left side of her chin that reached to her mouth and swelled a small portion of her lower lip. Without even thinking about what he was doing, he curled his forefinger lightly against her mouth and brushed it gently over the injury. Vaguely he noted the warm breath that danced over his fingers. Vaguely he marveled at how soft her skin was. Vaguely he realized how much he wanted to touch her in other places, to see if they were warm and soft, too.
Her lips parted a mere breath, but her pupils expanded to nearly eclipse the blue of her irises. Only when he noted her reaction did Boone fully understand the intimacy inherent in his gesture, and the strangely erotic path his thoughts had suddenly begun to follow. He yanked back his hand with then speed of a viper and shoved it down to his side. Then he tried to meet her troubled gaze with as much indifference as he could fake.
He was about to say something else—although he couldn’t quite remember what—when she seemed to throw off the odd spell that had descended and snatched his hand back up to inspect it. Until then, he had forgotten about the jagged red line that rent his thumb from the cuticle nearly to his wrist.
“Oh, my God, did Mack do that to you?” the woman asked, stroking the pad of her thumb delicately over the wound.
Boone jerked his hand out of her grasp, uncomfortable with the way his skin warmed under her touch. But all he said in response was, “Yeah.”
She reached for his hand again, and when he snaked it back to his side, she looked positively dashed. “I am so sorry about that. Mack would normally never scratch someone. Really. He was just scared last night. He wasn’t himself.”
Boone expelled a dubious sound. “Yeah, I’m sure. Just tell me his shots are all up-to-date.”
“Of course they are,” she assured him. “Honest, he really is the sweetest creature in the world. If you got to know him, you’d realize that.”
Boone tried to keep his voice impassive when he replied, “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”
“I mean it. If you want—”
“You look a little battered yourself,” he interrupted, lifting his chin to indicate the contusion that marred her otherwise flawless complexion. “Did you have that checked out by a doctor?”
She shook her head, then touched the bruise and her lower lip with considerably less care than he had, working her jaw as if testing the damage. “It wasn’t necessary. It’s not as bad as it looks. I think it must have happened when I was coming down the stairs,” she added. “I don’t really remember much of what happened. One minute I was waking up in bed, the next I was standing in the yard holding Mack, watching my house burn to the ground.”
“It’s not unusual for people to experience that kind of thing when they’ve been through something like that,” Boone told her.
She nodded quickly, and he began to understand that the action wasn’t so much born out of her agreement with anything he said as it was her complete uncertainty about the situation.
“The insurance guy has already come by, can you imagine?” she hurried on. “I had no idea they’d be that efficient. Unfortunately they’re not quite as efficient at issuing checks. He could only give me an advance for now. Still, it’s better than nothing, right? And they already found the source of the fire, too,” she added, her obviously forced cheerfulness beginning to fade. “It was my clothes dryer. Of all things...”
She chuckled, but the sound was strangled and uneasy and accompanied by a sparkle of moisture in her eyes that she hastily swiped away with the back of one hand.
Although he couldn’t imagine why he cared, Boone heard himself ask, “Is there anything you need? Do you have someone to stay with? Family in the area?”
She sniffled and shook her head. “No. My folks passed away a few years ago, and I’m an only child.” She hesitated for a moment before amending, “Actually, I do have—”
She physically shook off whatever she was going to say, and as quickly as she’d changed the subject before, she changed it again. “The advance will cover anything I’ll need right away—clothes, food, that kind of thing. I’ve got a room at the Arlington Motor-on-Inn. Don’t know how long I’ll have to stay there, though.”
Boone nodded, his mind reeling at the dizzying wealth of information she’d imparted in that one quick announcement. And for some reason, he felt oddly cheated that there wasn’t some small thing he could offer to do for her. The reaction was more than a little strange. He hadn’t wanted to do something for somebody in a long time. Not since he’d offered himself heart and soul and lock, stock and barrel to his fiancée—or rather, his ex-fiancée—and received a good, swift kick in the teeth for a wedding present.
“Mind if I come in?” the woman asked, squashing the usual bitterness that generally rose with memories of Genevieve before it could rise to the fore. She held up her other hand to display a fast-food-issued cardboard caddy that held a bag of doughnuts and two plastic cups of coffee. “I went by the firehouse to look for you, but the guys there said you got off at eight and had already gone home. They also said you wouldn’t mind if I stopped by, as long as I brought you some coffee and doughnuts when I did.”
She grinned brightly, but it was clear that she was still none too certain about the response she was likely to receive from him.
“They, uh...they told me where you live,” she added, her smile falling somewhat. She seemed to think it was very important that he have that information. “I, um...I didn’t even have to ask for your address. They wrote down